Explore the Perennial Kans grass (Saccharum spontaneum) Biomass for Releasing Reducing Sugars and its Optimization

摘要

Kans grass (Saccharum spontaneum) is a perennial grass native to South Asia. It is a low cost, renewable and prevalent source of reducing sugars which can further be easily utilized by the microorganisms to produce valuable chemicals. The objective of the present study was to investigate the effect of H2SO4 concentration, biomass loading and reaction time for releasing reducing sugars from Kans grass. A 23 rotatable central composite design was adopted in designing the experiments and response surface methodology was used to optimize the process. The optimum acid concentration, biomass loading and reaction time were found to be 61.10% (w/w), 10.80% (w/v) and 45 min respectively. The batch processing of all the experiments were carried out at normal boiling temperature of water under standard atmospheric pressure. Under these conditions significantly very high total reducing sugar yield was 83.5% (w/w) obtained on the total carbohydrate content basis.